


The Light of the Moon (The Under the Sun Remix)

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fantasy, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Studying for midterms in the library, strange things begin to happen to Leonard McCoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light of the Moon (The Under the Sun Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imagined_haven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_haven/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Light of the Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3041) by imagined_haven. 



Campus legend suggests that there’s been a ghost in the south wing of Archer Library since the turn of the last century, even though anyone who bothers to check the plaque outside the building knows that it was built thirty years later. The only haunting in Archer Library is the ghost of the old librarian, who knows the stacks better than any subsequent hires and spends tireless hours shelving books, interrupting hapless couples, waking snoring students, and periodically shooing the odd wood pixie away from the older books. Still, the south wing is usually deserted, undeservedly stigmatized by its reputation. A rogue ghost, an undetected or anti-social, or even completely fictitious one, can be a problematic ghost.

Archer is the only library on campus that Leonard uses, since the university’s entirely collection of books on Healing are housed there, in the southwest corner of the south wing. While most training Healers prefer to request the books they need rather than dip into the stacks themselves, Leonard regularly trudges through himself, until he’s memorized them perfectly. There’s a table by the west window that he studies at every day, from the end of his classes in the afternoon until past midnight, when the lights dim and his eyes become leaden. If there _is_ a ghost, Leonard hasn’t met it in three months of studying in the south wing of Archer since his acceptance to the Healing program.

It isn’t even until the seventh month, during the early bloom of spring just before midterms, when the perfect days taunt him from the other side of the windows, that Leonard notices anything strange. He’s been _stressed_ before, and he’s even fallen asleep while studying in the library, but he’s sure that he stopped sleepwalking when he was thirteen years old and began having _other_ nighttime issues to deal with. As a child, Leonard’s mother had his bedroom door specially charmed to keep him from sleepwalking after he took a nighttime walk into a neighbor’s garden, and had been found there the next morning, fast asleep, dotted with dew, and tended by a few adoring fairies. He’s not quite ready to go to such extremes, and asking Charming students for favors is more a matter of inconvenience than pride, but it’s beginning to worry him. There are conversations with friends and teachers he doesn’t remember having, thoughts and faded half-memories he can’t account for in any experience he’s ever had, scrapes and bruises he can’t account for, and even times that he wakes up in an entirely different part of campus than the one he fell asleep in.

“It was completely weird,” Hikaru says to him over lunch one day, his eyes following the whip-thin, curly-headed Salamander—a fire mage-in-training—around the perimeter of the cafeteria, missing his mouth with his fork before shaking off his distraction and looking back across the table at Leonard. “I had a question for you about the healing properties of wild starflower, and you looked at me like I was nuts.”

“And then I started hitting on you?” Leonard asks incredulously, holding his own fork above his plate before scoffing and looking down at his tray with a pinched scowl.

“And then Uhura,” Hikaru confirms brightly.

Leonard groans and rolls his eyes heavenward. “Are you sure you didn’t dream this? Are you sure midterms aren’t getting to _you?_ ”

“I’m just saying, someone is practicing their illusions, or they’ve made a really good golem modeled on you, or you’ve got a doppelganger.” His dark eyes flick back over into the corner, at the Salamander, and then back to Leonard. “Or you need to lay off the studying and get some sleep. Not that I’m a Healer or anything.”

Leonard just rolls his eyes and drops his fork into the plate. “I’m going to study some more. I’ll see you later.”

“At the haunted library?” Hikaru teases, but his attention isn’t focused anymore; his eyes slide past him and land back on the boy, who is no more aware of Hikaru now than he was moments before.

He shrugs it off and leaves him there, carrying his bag over his shoulder. Haunted library or not, Leonard has a sinking, panicky feeling that he understands what’s happening to him, and he doesn’t know whether to be frightened or annoyed. It’s extremely bad manners for a ghost to possess the living without their express permission, and when permission is given, it usually only happens in controlled environments to prevent the spirit from forcibly taking a living person hostage in their own body.

The unsettling feeling is what leads him to spend the rest of his afternoon, normally dedicated to studying, reading through spellbooks heavy on theory and light on useful guidance. Leonard isn’t a conjuror, or a summoner, or even very good at heavily theoretical magic. He likes magic he can touch and carefully control. Untamed magic, like the kind needed to trap his ghost, leaves him feeling uncomfortable.

Ten to midnight, though, he’s standing in the south wing of Archer Library with an open book, tracing patterns into the flagstones and checking his watch to make sure he’s in position at exactly midnight. He straightens his back and the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention.

“You know,” a voice begins from behind him, and Leonard’s heart leaps straight into his throat as he wheels around and comes eye-to-eye with a vaguely translucent man-shaped figure. If he weren’t expecting a ghost, he might have screamed. The ghost continues, “I’m not very hard to catch for a chat, if that’s what this is all about.”

Leonard finds steel for his spine and swallows. “You didn’t seem very inclined to talk before now.” He cuts himself short of accusation, because if the ghost _hasn’t_ had anything to do with this, perhaps he knows what’s happening to Leonard.

“Maybe not with you,” the ghost grins, and Leonard thinks that he must have been very handsome in life. The associated attitude is a result of knowing just how handsome he is, or was. “I’ve been _plenty_ friendly before now.”

“And that’s why you’re haunting the unused wing of the library?” His voice lifts with skepticism, but the ghost laughs, a hollow twinkling in his eyes.

“I guess I was wrong about you before,” he muses, and walks around Leonard—or as close an approximation of a walk that a ghost can do. Leonard scoffs and watches him with an arched eyebrow, but the ghost finally stops and holds out a hand to him. “Name’s Jim Kirk.”

Leonard doesn’t quite know what to do—as far as he knows, ghosts can’t actually hold hands with him—but he reaches out to clasp his hand and is rewarded with a tickling, icy wash up his arm. Close enough, he thinks, and retracts his arm to his side again. “Leonard McCoy,” he says cautiously. “I’m a—”

“A Healer,” Jim provides. “I’ve seen you studying. And…” Leonard understands immediately, and he stops being frightened of the not knowing.

“And I came to talk to you about the _and_ ,” he says irritably. “What in hell gave you the right to—to barge in and take over? You know that I’ve got a _life_ , after all. You’ve been living it at random for me.”

“By the way, the girl in the suite next to yours is _really_ hot,” Jim says. He doesn’t even look apologetic in the slightest, which Leonard somehow expected from him. “And I bet you could get her in bed with you if you wanted.”

“I’m not looking to—” Leonard falls short of words, a bubble of indignation swelling in his chest.

“Okay, well,” Jim says with a cocky sort of grin. “If you don’t have the guts, I can do it for you.”

“I’m not _interested_ in sleeping with Gaila,” Leonard bursts out, and even as he continues raging, he feels a wash of guilt when he looks at Jim’s crestfallen face. “I’m interested in keeping you from taking control of me and taking my life for a joy ride around campus whenever you damn well please!”

“You didn’t seem to mind,” Jim says and heads toward the same corner where Leonard usually studies. Leonard grabs up his bag and follows after him, because he’s not finished with this conversation, even if Jim thinks they are.

“Of course I mind,” he spits after him, tangled up in the strap. “Why wouldn’t I mind? Don’t you know this shit is dangerous? There’s no clairvoyant to keep you from running amok all over the place, or from getting stuck, or killing me, there’s _nothing_. Don’t you think I want my life?”

“There was always resistance when I tried before,” Jim explains, so earnestly that it makes Leonard’s head hurt with feeling sorry for him, which is probably what Jim wants. He doesn’t _want_ to pity him. He doesn’t, but his face softens into a gentler scowl, the kind that let his cousins get away with summoning minor demons when he was a teenager.

“I was _asleep_ , of course I wasn’t resisting.” Jim finally manages to look a little sheepish, and Leonard sinks down into a chair, tossing the spellbook onto the table. His anger is evaporating faster than he can control it, and when Leonard drops his head into his hands, he shoots one last glare in Jim’s direction. “You’re not even the least bit sorry.”

“I’m sorry for worrying you,” he says, and hovers a little too close for Leonard’s comfort. Leonard waves him away and rubs his face as Jim continues, “Really, I’m sorry.”

“But you won’t promise not to do it again—what if you _did_ kill someone doing this?”

“I’m _very_ good with other people’s bodies.” The maddening grin is back. “Seriously, I’m better to your body than _you_ are most of the time.”

A final spark of temper lights, but Leonard feels it dying even as he explodes, “That doesn’t mean I don’t want it!” The librarian appears through a bookcase and gives them a reproachful stare, floating through the next stack and disappearing wordlessly. Leonard lowers his voice, and appreciates that Jim, at least, looks chastened—if not by his outburst, then by the appearance of another ghost.

“If you don’t want to attract too much attention and get someone to exorcise you, cut out the possession trick.” Leonard picks up his back and forces himself to stand with some kind of finality, but Jim frowns, as if he senses that his chances are fading for—for whatever it is he wants.

“You’re the first one,” he admits in a rush, “and it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to leave. Tied to the library and all—or, well, mostly to campus, but mostly around here.”

Leonard stares at him. He’s never fully comprehended the intricacies of binding ghosts to physical objects, or locations, or whatever it is that anchors them in place. “So you wanted to look around campus?”

“And meet people,” he adds, and flashes a charming smile that probably got him far in life. Leonard isn’t immediately sold, but after a moment’s contemplation—he has absolutely _no reason_ not to report Jim to campus authorities so they can deal with him—he sighs and holds out his hand to him again.

“Just ask before you do it, all right? You can—borrow my body or whatever, just _don’t get in trouble_ and don’t get _me_ in trouble.” Leonard knows he’ll regret the deal before Jim shakes his hand again, leaving him with another icy chill straight through his chest.

“Deal,” Jim says, his face like a beacon, and the librarian floats past one last time, shushing them with a stern glare and a hollow hissing sound, not unlike a deflating balloon.

*

Their arrangement is a terrible idea, and Leonard refuses to allow Jim _near_ him until midterms are past. He can’t risk his exams, though he’s mostly sure Jim wouldn’t ruin that for him. Instead, they talk over Leonard’s books. Sometimes Jim offers to quiz him, but Leonard finds that less helpful and more of an annoyance, so he usually refuses, and talks to him while writing out study guides, copying notes from ancient scrolls, or doing mindless calculations for his class on classic folk herbs, ointments, and remedies; the same one he’s taking with Hikaru, who politely refuses to study with him when he’s studying with Jim around.

When midterms are over, though, Leonard comes to the library with his bag one evening, like usual, and stares at Jim cautiously before setting it down.

“Okay,” he says, steeling himself for the worst, twisting up his eyebrows, and meeting Jim’s eyes with wavering determination, “I want to be awake for this.”

Jim looks honestly surprised from his chair, but he straightens and moves toward Leonard, reaching out and smiling a little when Leonard pulls back, his face stony and guarded. He doesn’t trust him yet, and he doesn’t know how to start now. It scares him.

“You’ll let me go when it’s done, right?” he presses, and Jim nods, reaches out for his hand, and falls forward into him.

Leonard flinches, expecting the cold wash of touch he’s used to around Jim, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he falls backward into a bookcase, his arms flailing too late—not his reaction, but that of someone not expecting the collision. Is this what Jim was doing to him before?

“You should have been sitting down,” his mouth says, but Leonard recognizes that it’s Jim speaking. His voice sounds different than he’s used to, but everything feels a little different, like he’s in a dream without the fuzzy feeling of near-reality. This is _real_. The idea sends his mind spinning, and Jim laughs with his mouth again, turning Leonard’s hands over and looking at the backs of them, the creases of his palms, which a Seer once puzzled over for twenty minutes before sending him away with cryptic warnings of the dead. Leonard ignored it then, but he wishes now that he could remember whatever it was she said to him.

 _“What are we doing?”_ he asks, directing his thoughts in a deliberate way that makes him feel stupid, but his lips turn up and Jim laughs, his head turned up in the sunlight that pours through the windows. It’s funny, the way Leonard never noticed it before, until everything in the world around them is sharpened and intensified by Jim’s excitement, as if this has never happened before. Maybe it did, but Leonard wasn’t there—in the most relative sense—to experience the joy that pulses through him—through them, really. It’s never occurred to him that Jim might have missed the rest of the world, and it’s only through Leonard that he feels alive again.

“We,” Jim declares, “are going for a walk.” And then he turns and puts a foot in front of the other, a miracle of flesh and sinew and their mingling spirits, and walks from the library.


End file.
